Defund the IPCC Now

Well, I woke up to some bad news this morning. It turns out that the GAO, the US General Accounting Office, says US has been secretly hiding their funding of the IPCC for the last decade.

They were already told not to do that by the GAO. In the 2005 GAO report with the swingeing title of “Federal Reports on Climate Change Funding Should Be Clearer and More Complete”, the GAO said … well, basically what the title said. But noooo, those sneaky bureaucrats didn’t do that at all.

The latest 2011 GAO Report says the US government has not changed their ways. They have been clandestinely providing about half the operating funds for the IPCC for the last decade. In other words, the IPCC funding arrangements are of a piece with their “scientific” claims and their other actions—secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.

The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC. Thanks, guys. Foolish me, I hadn’t realized that paying for bureaucrats to go party in Cancun and Durban was part of the function of the United States Department of State.

I also found out that the IPCC got $12.1 million dollars from the US Global Change Research Program. That one really angrifies my blood. The IPCC flat out states that they do not do a single scrap of scientific research … so why is the US Global Change Research Program giving them a dime, much less twelve million, that was supposed to go for research? I could use that for my research, for example …

The 2011 GAO report had some strong advice for the climate profiteers behind this secretive funding. They said:

“Congress and the public cannot consistently track federal climate change funding or spending over time,”

Oh, no, wait, that’s what the GAO said back in 2005. Unfortunately, they have no enforcement powers. What they said this time around was that the funding information:

“… was not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”

In other words … no change from 2005.

Congressfolk, you are not paying attention. These guys are taking money for research and using it to party in Durban and other nice places around the planet. And the US has been secretly funding them for a decade.

Can anyone name for me one valuable thing that the IPCC has done? Can anyone point to an accomplishment by the IPCC that justifies their existence? Because I can’t. They throw a good party, to be sure, their last global extravaganza had 10,000 guests … but as for advancing the climate discussion, they have done nothing but push it backwards.

And the next Assessment Report, AR5, will be even more meaningless than the last. This time, people are watching them refuse to require conflict-of-interest statements from the authors. This time, people are watching them appoint known serial scientific malfeasants to positions of power in the writing of the report. This time, people are keeping track of the petty machinations of the railroad engineer that’s running the show despite calls from his own supporters to step down.

As a result, the AR5 report from the IPCC has been pre-debunked. It will be published to no doubt great fanfare and sink like a stone, dragged down by the politicized, poorly summarized bad science and rewarmed NGO puff pieces that the IPCC is promoting as though they were real science.

Folks … can we call a long overdue halt to this IPCC parade of useless and even antiscientific actions? Can we stop the endless partying at taxpayer expense? Can we “trow da bums out” and get back to climate science?

Wrapped into the many amendments recently passed by the House of Representatives — a total of $60 billion in spending cuts that the president called a “nonstarter” — was one by Republican Missouri Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer that would prohibit $13 million in taxpayer dollars from going to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group whose occasional missteps have been the source of countless confrontations among climate scientists over the past year.

…

A congressional aide told FoxNews.com that he plans to pursue the bill — regardless of whether it is passed in the larger Republican budget.

“The congressman plans to continue his effort to stop taxpayer support of the IPCC and remains cautiously optimistic that the Senate will take the amendment,” said Keith Beardslee, a spokesman for the congressman. “Failing that, Blaine has reintroduced separate legislation he first introduced in the 111th Congress to halt funding to the IPCC.”

152 thoughts on “Defund the IPCC Now”

I completely agree, but unfortunately the US Congress is currently pretending that we can spend more than we take in in revenue indefinately and that the cost to service the debt is meaningless. That won’t last of course, but it is getting harder to fix without ever greater pain

“…people are keeping track of the petty machinations of the railroad engineer that’s running the show…”
I rode on a train once in India…. “HE” could have been my driver…!
Surely that qualifies me for some grade of position at the IPCC.
(that’s a sarc by the way)

Willis: “Congressfolk, you are not paying attention. These guys are taking money for research and using it to party in Durban and other nice places around the planet. And the US has been secretly funding them for a decade.”
Back to the basic fundamental problem we humans can’t seem to get straight. Politics and politicians, rather than ethical servant leadership.

The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC.
Could someone explain how the IPCC fits within the the mission of the US State Department? Is it the “Intergovernmental” part of IPCC?
Again – for all US citizens who are reading these comments. Please , remember this (and the many, many other instances of misspent climate funding) in November – the ONLY way to defund anything in the government is to have representatives with the backbone to do something (or at least speak up).
Personally, I would like to see this issue of funding cast in terms of choices. For example, do we want the IPCC funded or, instead, programs to fight poverty, disease, crime, etc. ??

I haven’t looked at every Federal government agency budget but have looked at several over the past year and noticed that AGW funding is quite common. DoD, DOE, NASA, and EPA all have significant programs… some of which are obviously related to “climate change” and others where it is somewhat hidden (e.g., biofuel research). I also knew that the State Department had a budget for climate change but until reading this post, I had no idea what it was for. To call this pathetic would be an understatement. I suspect that if you looked, the Department of (indoctrination) Education has global warming in its budget as does every other agency. It’s time to clean house in Washington.

“Folks … can we call a long overdue halt to this IPCC parade of useless and even antiscientific actions? Can we stop the endless partying at taxpayer expense? Can we “trow da bums out” and get back to climate science?”
oh, sure!

Theres nothing really surprises me anymore about this whole climastrology lark.
Matters not how deep the depths, they will plumb them.
the only time this will al change is when the worms finally get out the can.
Mr FOIA, do your thing huh?

Willis, great reporting as always. I’m from Calif. so it is a waste of my time to contact my representatives on this issue. However, I will try to persuade my out–of-state friends and relatives to contact their representatives.
FYI, in the spirit of the global warming > climate change > climate disruption name game, the General Accounting Office(GAO) is now called the Government Accountability Office. Whatever, they call it, it frequently does a good job ferreting out government waste and corruption. The unfortunate part, as you state, it doesn’t have any enforcement powers.

Nothing will be defunded, as this year there will be another happy “jamboree” at Rio de Janeiro……Samba!!!
If you want an invitation it´s very simple: You must be cool, gay, atheist, believing that most of the humanity-those peaky ,bad smelling, and dirty working for life individuals must die (and to cooperate to do it asap by giving them a convenient newly developed “flu vaccine”), have white and powdery and sustainable “aspirations” through your non polluted by CO2 nostrils, be a faithful follower and if possible slave of your elite masters (members of the holy “White Brotherhood” who care about the sustainability of their own also holy profits), etc.etc.http://www.earthsummit2012.org/

Can anyone name for me one valuable thing that the IPCC has done?
Yes, they proved they aren’t ready nor are likely to ever represent the Scientific Community on global issues. They are the low bar to use for future policy related to science funding — assuming the politico boobs finally wake up and see it for what it is.

It is the ripple effect. America dumped 320 million into a cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia because of these fearmongering studies and claims. That plant never produced and was just sold for 5.1 million.
The collateral damage for the carbon Climate cartel is still hitting the trillions.

The U.S. are paying a lot of money for decades now to fund a platform for US and capitalism haters to get organized. Was originally thought the other way around, probably.
I really imagined you guys would be smarter.

Great stuff! …. Umm… Except for that whole confusion between the IPCC – a relatively small office in Geneva, and the UN FCCC which runs the COP meetings in Durban and Copenhagen. Don’t get so caught up in your rhetoric that you throw facts to the winds now….

WillieB – while your senators are useless, not all your representatives are, depending on your location. I don’t know if this would fit on Issa’s plate, for example, but I’m sure it’s the kind of thing he’d oppose.
Frankly, everyone involved in hiding political funding like this needs to be ON THE STREET tomorrow, looking for a job in the private sector, but that won’t happen unless we have a MAJOR shake-up this November at the polls.
Frankly, I worry that corruption has become too institutionalized, and the practice of using the law as toilet paper too widespread. “Fixing” things like this is no longer a simple thing, if it ever was.

We shouldn’t be funding the UN FCCC either. In fact I am ready to say we should stop funding any UN programs at all. If something is worth doing we should fund it directly and avoid the corrupt middle men.

Wilis,
Oh, how the mind plays tricks…
First saw “Synthesis Report” in the graphic because that is what my mind expected to see, having been exposed to that title many times.
Took me a bit to see it actually says “Synthesis Repork”.
Good one.

I’ve written repeatedly there should be organized crime hearings about all the taxpayer money spent because of AGW claims. I also believe the US taxpayer has good reason to file a class action lawsuit against the government for aiding in the theft of millions of dollars (as in Solyndra).
All we’d need would be one young, energetic attorney eager to grab some headlines early on. Enviro groups sue us (via the states) all the time. Why can’t we sue those groups in return?
Otherwise, really enjoyed this read and cited you in my column this afternoon. Must commend you on making a verb of ‘anger.’ That was inspired. I like to tweak words too. best, KBD

If you live in the US, you might want to forward this URL to your Congressional Representatives and suggest they shut down the UN IPCC Funding. I posted the report on my blog and then sent a link to my Congressman McClintock! Ask your Congressman and Senator why they are buying the UN fraudsters rope to strangle our economy? I did not it send to my CA Senators, as both are rabid warmers. You cannot imagine the junk responses I get back from Sen. Boxer when I send her some climate change facts. Well, maybe you could as a WUWT reader.

taxpayers are suckered again:
4 Jan: Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia ethanol plant sold, at taxpayers’ loss
The failed Range Fuels wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker with equally grand plans to transform the alternative energy world.
LanzaTech, a New Zealand-based biofuel company, paid $5.1 million for the plant in Soperton. Its main financial backer: Vinod Khosla, a California entrepreneur who also bankrolled Range Fuels, and helped secure its government loans, before Range went bust last year.
LanzaTech hasn’t received the same type of loans, but the company has received $7 million from the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation to assist in the development of alternative fuels…
The Bush administration’s Energy Department steered a $76 million federal grant to Range. The Department of Agriculture followed up with an $80 million loan guarantee. Georgia officials pledged $6.2 million. Treutlen County, one of the state’s poorest, offered 20 years worth of tax abatements and 97 acres in its industrial park.
Private investors reportedly put up $158 million. In all, the project raised more than $320 million.
Range, unable to turn wood into ethanol, closed its doors a year ago. It never came close to creating the 70 jobs once promised…http://www.ajc.com/business/georgia-ethanol-plant-sold-1289567.html

Hi Willis
Neil is right that you are confusing IPCC and UNFCCC. But if the money is going to IPCC this is even more interesting. We all understand that going to the climate conferences in Kopenhagen, Cancun and Durban costs a lot of money. But IPCC doesn’t organise these. It is always said that scientists work voluntarily on the IPCC reports. In practice this means their institutes accept that for a year or two employers will spend part of their time writing an IPCC chapter. If the US government paid 19 million, where was the money going to? Partly to institutes like NOAA and NCAR where a lot of scientists work that contributed to AR4?
Cheers, Marcel

With a UN patsie in the White House, little hope of anything like this happening, but we can still be ‘hopey changey’ for some steps in this direction as this whole project falls apart.
Neil says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:48 am
“the IPCC – a relatively small office in Geneva”
Yes, nice the way these parasites choose to house themselves in THE most expensive and comfortable place possible. Since Switzerland is not an EU member, but the EU seems to be the last stronghold of this insanity, they should move their offices to some dreary city in the Ruhr Valley and rent space in an abandoned steel mill. Or perhaps move to Greenland to bask in the heat.

It was never a question WHO was funding the majority of the UN climate change thrust – any damn fool knew it was the US government. Just as the majority of the UN itself is funded by the US government – that the IPCC and its various branches would by fully or partly funded by the US taxpayers should not be a shock to anyone. Where else would the UN get the bucks? From the third world? Russia? The Arabs? China? Not likely.
Nor should it be a surprise to any American their congress has lost total control of their budgetary process decades ago. LOL – you don’t get to be $15 TRILLION in debt and with no one held responsible for your debt across the board and then expect accountability in the budgetary process do you? Moreover Americans care very little and will hold no one responsible as most ALL congressmen and women will be re-elected.
You Americans may NOT be in Kyoto but you ARE funding the entire show and ARE Kyoto for all intents and purposes. Canada and Japan at least had the common sense to tell the IPCC exactly where to shove Kyoto. The Americans ARE the monster behind the entire climate change thrust without which the UN IPCC monstrosity would collapse over night. And THAT is hard cold FACT!

don’t back down, China:
5 Jan: UK Telegraph: Peter Simpson: Chinese airlines warn they will refuse to pay EU carbon tax
China’s biggest airlines warned on Thursday they will refuse to pay a new EU tax aimed at cutting carbon emissions.
The China Air Transport Association was more militant in its response – declaring its members would not co-operate with the ETS and refuse to pay the added tax.
It also said it would seek legal action and try and attempt to form an international alliance to scrap the scheme…
China is likely to be able to pull unusually heavy punches in the dispute as its air carriers ferry hundreds of thousand of passenger from Asia into Europe’s troubled markets, including the tourist sector…http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/emissions/8994947/Chinese-airlines-warn-they-will-refuse-to-pay-EU-carbon-tax.html

Frank K. says:Could someone explain how the IPCC fits within the the mission of the US State Department? Is it the “Intergovernmental” part of IPCC?
Here is the State Department’s Mission Statement:
“Shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere.”http://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/index.htm#mission
Addressing the consequences of a problem that the vast majority of the world’s scientists and scientific bodies agree is happening, and will get worse, clearly falls under this purview. Frankly, it would be irresponsible if the State Department *weren’t* studying the issue.

Others have said the same, but I firmly believe that because the IPCC is not responsible to, or representative of governments, it is close to impossible to regulate efficiently.
It is structured and based on an idea that science, and ultimately human organisations, are self-regulating. Like those who think the market is entirely self-regulating, this can be shown to be false.
Human nature is not the gentle, dispassionate, objective thing that some believe it is, especially in a group context; it is HIGHLY susceptible to bias and ideology. One could almost say we have evolved and are pre-disposed to be that way, to tend towards a group mentality can be advantageous for such groups in a survivial context, i.e. the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
All social organisations tend towards extremism in the absence of external regulation and checks. For example: individuals within social organisations who are more extreme tend to get promoted for internal social/political reasons, not scientific ones. The UN finds it hard to recognise these basic ideas, but unless it can get its act together in terms of regulation of its own bias, agendas, and excesses, it will ultimately be its own undoing. Even the academics are beginning to notice, who are usually the last to recognise intellectual politicial expediency.
Note, it was from academia that we got both communist ideology, and social darwinism, the two great disasters of the 20th century.

The “Long March Through the Institutions” (“Der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen“) keeps marching along.
Clintonistas marching through the institutions for the last two decades are retiring comfortably, pleased with their replacement by the 0bamaist horde and its czars and its Dear Leader.
The next president is unlikely to seriously reduce leftist control of State, Defense, Justice, Education, Commerce, Interior, Labor, HHS, HUD, Energy, EPA. Bush did nothing. ‘New tone’ don’t you know.
Only congressional defunding of leftist-controlled agencies will make a difference.

The basic fact is that parasitizing established government agencies for the purpose of sucking funding out of them to support the UN Green Agenda is rampant. The key words to watch for are “Sustainable Development”. Sounds nice and warm and fuzzy, but really means “Stop development and make the economy unsustainable”. IF you see it in a grant or funding from a government Agency, it has been parasitized…
So far I’ve found loads of it in DOE, NASA, and NSF (along with others). The quantity is staggering. The UN (at their web site) says they expect to get $600 Billion per year. Most of that to come from the USA and EU (as we are the ‘developed’ countries).
Note this link is a UN Site:http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_33.shtml

33.18. The secretariat of the Conference has estimated the average annual costs (1993-2000) of implementing in developing countries the activities in Agenda 21 to be over $600 billion, including about $125 billion on grant or concessional terms from the international community. These are indicative and order-of-magnitude estimates only, and have not been reviewed by Governments. Actual costs will depend upon, the specific strategies and programmes Governments decide upon for implementation.
33.19. Developed countries and others in a position to do so should make initial financial commitments to give effect to the decisions of the Conference. They should report on such plans and commitments to the United Nations General Assembly at its forty-seventh session, in

Further down we find that it is DIRECTLY related to “climate science”:

(d) Cooperate in research to develop methodologies and identify threshold levels of atmospheric pollutants, as well as atmospheric levels of greenhouse gas concentrations, that would cause dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system and the environment as a whole, and the associated rates of change that would not allow ecosystems to adapt naturally;

So it’s very clear that it is a real thing, and is directly driving the whole “climate science” of “Global Warming” via money taken from the “developed countries”. They lay out the whole plan on the UN web site.
While wandering through the F.O.I.A.-2011 emails I ran into a set of them showing active support for the UN effort named “Agenda 21”. I had, prior, thought that “Agenda 21” was just “crazy talk”, but we have people actively working toward it’s goals.
Some further digging into that showed that there is a conscious effort to co-opt various government agencies and then “wash” funding through them. As a result, you have places like the National Science Foundation and NASA providing buckets of money that gets washed through NGOs to support the Agenda folks power grab.
All very clever, but very disturbing.
You can watch my transition from “that’s crazy talk” to What The??? As I started with the emails here:http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/foia-agenda-21/
So yes, de-fund the IPCC, but don’t forget the OTHER thousands of suckers in the flesh of government funding for all the other parts of the “Agenda”…

Hear, hear!
Have you seen this video? It does not come from Russia, Iran or North Korea – it is from the democratic free west of Australia which sadly demonstrates the amount of spin, deceit and bare faced lies that some governments are prepared to use in the perpetuating the myth that taxing CO2 will save the world.
Perhaps Gillard should also have told her subjects this:http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/latest/8916664/carbon-tax-billions-to-help-poor-nations/http://www.liberal.org.au/Latest-News/2011/03/02/UN-Green-Climate-Fund.aspx
But don’t worry, just like the US government’s book cooks, you will find that the Australian Labor Party’s book cooks will ensure that “every single cent of carbon tax will go back to the taxpayer” and the billions of dollars to fund the IPCC slush fund will be hidden away in some obscure document on foreign aid.

Possibly OT, but maybe not.
It’s been clear for a couple of years that the only way the team and the rag tag army of NGO’s could carry on perpetuating the ‘big lie’ so brazenly, is if they had ‘top cover’
i.e. political protection
FOIA alluded to this, and so have some of the more astute commentators, this revelation adds strength to their argument

Because the US dollar has been the currency of international trade the US has been able to print money and the cost of servicing debt has been apparently small – up until the GFC and subsequent debt crises wake up call for the whole world – which ironically, whilst engulfing the US in a debt problem, probably saved the US because there is now no acceptable alternative for the currency of international trade – everybody has the problem even the creditors who are hoping their holding assets not junk.
Ordinary people know they can’t live off the credit card indefinitely and bankruptcy simply spreads the economic pain to often innocent parties as well increasing the problem.
I say if the US can reduce expenditures without economic pain it must do so.
There is no downside to saving millions by not pouring them down the IPCC drainhole.
Go for it !

@Kay B. Day:
Interesting… they are acting in a manner that would subject them to RICO. All you need is to prove one criminal act and it’s RICO all the way. (A truly horrific law that lets folks be found guilty first, their property confiscated, and THEN they can try to prove they are innocent to get it back. The “Corrupt Organization” part that is the last two letters 😉
Hmm…. so 30% of $600,000,000,000 per year would be decent pay for young lawyer 😉
Would, say, calling funding for a party in Rio “research” count as a finding of fraud in the application for “research funding”….

Typo
“they’re” not “their” in ” … hoping their holding assets not junk.”
Also – as the science is settled and we’re all gonna burn and there is no doubt there is absolutely no need for further science
and hence no need for expensive holiday junkets
– let’s leave it to the ploiticians to deal with.

Thanks for this info Willis. I agree with you … GO LUETKEMEYER!!
The bill is H.R. 680: To prohibit United States contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change … you can look it up at govtrack.us and/or PopVox.com
I just wrote to my congressman asking him to support this bill!

Willis,
I’m not up to speed on the report in question, or the story. But based on how government works, it’s possible that the IPCC received funding that wasn’t “spent” properly by a federal agency. Money get’s moved around all the time when discretionary funds are not spend on schedule. Are we certain that someone in the State Department deliberately sent funds to the IPCC, or was the decision made elsewhere because it was “extra money” that had not been spent?

Without becoming a ‘conspiracy theorist’ – I can’t help wondering what’s going on. I mean the US State Dept is many things but it’s NOT a left philanthropic bleeding heart. I wonder if there are layers of motive behind the governmental pushing of AGW that we haven’t thought about enough?

Willis, do you mean that the flies be shood away and the honey jar have its lid screwed on tight? But what would the flies eat then? Poor flies, they will die of hunger. Poor flies. //Sarc off.
Great post. Way to go W.
Alex

Since this has been happening for some time and over the better part of 2 different administrations one needs to wounder where to oversight committees of congress are doing. I suspect not very much. This shit is pulled mostly by senior bureaucrats and political appointees. These people the congress, administration and bureaucracy believe the tax money belongs to them not the taxpayers so they can do with it what they want. Don’t believe me just buy one a few beers and you will learn just how deeply they believe this crap. Politicians are the worst of the lot too. They believe it is their duty to bribe the voters with their own tax money.

proskeptic says:
January 5, 2012 at 2:48 pm
“Without becoming a ‘conspiracy theorist’ – I can’t help wondering what’s going on. I mean the US State Dept is many things but it’s NOT a left philanthropic bleeding heart. I wonder if there are layers of motive behind the governmental pushing of AGW that we haven’t thought about enough?”
The idea behind CAGW was always to use it as a tool to push energy price hikes, tax increases and development of alternative energy infrastructures in order to reduce the dependency on middle Eastern oil. Probably goes back to 1973, oil price shock, Kissinger, Nixon, Limits To Growth, Club Of Rome.
A while later, during the 1975 Endangered Atmosphere conference, some scientists, Mead, Schneider, Holdren and Lovelock came up with a believable scare story.http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.htmlhttp://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
From there it was fabrication from start to finish…
Maybe the State Dept should rethink how useful the entire operation really is. Looks like it got out of hand. But maybe they still want to uphold it as an argument to stop the US from exploiting its own reserves; leaving them as strategic reserves for the future.

The reports says the government OVER stated how much was spent on the IPCC!
“Regarding State [Dept.] funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.”

highflight56433 says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:03 am
Back to the basic fundamental problem we humans can’t seem to get straight. Politics and politicians, rather than ethical servant leadership.
____
If want honest public leaders in Washington you’ll need to take the money out of the equation, and to do that, you’ll need to have campaign finance reform and term limits, and to do that, you’ll need to:
1) Get both the Senate and House to approve new legislation that would essentially cut them off from their happy little gravy trains (not at all likely)
2) Have a true People’s March on Washington and throw the bums out (even less likely as the shelves at Walmart are nicely stocked, most voters are asleep or radicalized into meaningless liberal/conservative bickering, and besides, if they marched on Washington to demand campaign finance reform and term limits, they’d risk getting shot or beat, and Americans are generally adverse to getting physically injured, etc. etc. etc.)
In other words, most Americans are more than willing to accept that the rich and powerful control their lives, and so long as they can watch their favorite TV program and buy their favorite tasty TV dinner at Walmart, they’re quite content to do nothing.

So many worthless organizations receiving tax $$, so little time …
Sadly, previous efforts to defund these leeches has been uniformly ineffective. They just scurry away from the light like cockroaches and pop out somewhere else where people aren’t looking.
I will write my Congressional representatives, but I suspect it will be futile.

proskeptic says: “…I mean the US State Dept is many things but it’s NOT a left philanthropic bleeding heart. ”
Sorry, I disagree. Did you see Erinome post above where she quoted, apparently favorably, the “Mission Statement” [oh, god, don’t get me started on the time and money wasted on developing those vapid, meaningless, globs of words] of the State Department? Here it is, and your assignment is to name one left-wing institution that a “left philanthropic bleeding heart” WOULD fund, but that the State Department WOULD NOT fund, acting pursuant to this drivel:
“Shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere.”
And we like puppy dogs, and unicorns, and rainbows, and ……….

There is a huge amount spent on climate research and another huge amount spent on green projects.
If you think of it in terms of cost / benefit analysis, it is…
… a gazillion dollars (including the failed green projects) that has produced a net drag on the economy and caused untold societal problems and has not resulted in a net change in the climate (which is not warming anyway).
That sounds like a lose/lose/lose/lose scenario to me. It is not a cost/benefit equation, it is cost/cost/cost/cost equation.
The only money spent should go into collecting real data by an objective statistics agency so that we can figure out what is really happening.
People should pay their own way to climate change conferences and there should only be voluntary green taxes (until we get some actual warming).

If $19 million is half….
….what exactly was so expensive that they needed $38 million?
The bigger question is what’s in it for our government/politicians? What do these world government, world trade, etc politicians have to gain?

I propose that all of the UN organizations based in Geneva be relocated to somewhere closer to many of the problem areas that the claim to represent, research and send our tax dollars to (the small part that is not absorbed by overhead, travel, conferences, etc,). The GoogleEarth pix of Mogadishu look good.

Mike says:
January 5, 2012 at 4:01 pm
The reports says the government OVER stated how much was spent on the IPCC!
“Regarding State [Dept.] funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.”
Mike
Thanks for telling us it’s WORSE than we thought, now there is even more ammunition to justify the defunding a good precautionary measure in the circumstances you describe!!

Alex says:
January 5, 2012 at 5:27 pm
If you are a US citizen just vote for Ron Paul and all those government leeches are gone.
—–
Ahhhhh, the eternal optimism of youth. Many people make the mistake of thinking that changing the people in power will make a difference. Just remember: “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. You can’t trust *anybody* in power, even if they start out as angels.
I have never met Ron Paul and have absolutely no basis on which to judge his character, but I can pretty much guarantee based on several thousand years of history that should be be elected, all his good intentions will take a back seat to his desire to be re-elected. He will make any deals, compromise any principles he thinks he has to, to stay in power. The exceptions to this rule are so few that each has a place in the history books (check out Cincinnatus, in honor of whom the city of Cincinnati is named).
The problem is with us, the electorate, who continually empower those who promise us free largesse from the public purse. When you, and your neighbors, and everyone else you know will voluntarily refuse benefits provided at the expense of others, then we have a chance to set things right.

When will the politicians on both sides of the Atlantic get it into their stupid brains that we are being conned by the IPCC. The “science” is not science and the economies of the Western World have neither the resources, the money or the will of the people to deal with this fictitious threat, especially at this time of the threat of global recession.
What we need is sound policies to provide cheap and sustainable (nuclear) energy to allow economic growth. We also need all the money spent on windmills, solar panels and the other “green” energy sources to be spent on research into hydrogen fusion. Fusion will provide the world with almost unlimited energy, to strengthen the world economy and move the poorest countries into prosperity.
Windmills, carbon capture and carbon credits of course assuage the conscience of the political left of centre, pseudo intellectuals, but none of these things feed, water or clothe the poor.
They are as useless as the left of centre, pseudo intellectuals.

Willis-
My apologies for not commenting sooner. I ready your post, and had to be immediately transported to the emergency room for a “laughectomy”.
(You see, I found your anti-government rant to be so hilarious I laughed until I hurt myself.)
To be sure, $3.1 million a year (since FY2001) is nothing to sneeze at. That’s the number the GAO gave in the link you provided, by the way.
The GAO number I find more interesting is the amount we’ve spent in/on Afghanistan, Iraq and the ‘Global War on Terror’ since 9/11/01. What does $6.7 billion a month do to your blood? Does it ‘angrify’ it as well?
You see, it has always appeared to me that your vendetta against the government and environmental science has been personal. Have I been mistaken this entire time? Is it really about the money?
Just curious.

Helmut Kohl and the German parliamentary commission of inquiry (1987)
essentially penned the Kyoto treaty to disadvantage the USA’s economy.http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/secret-history-climate-alarmism?page=1
[The Secret History of Climate Alarmism
A very German story of power politics disguised as environmentalism]
The US didn’t go for that so the UN is trying another way to impoverish us, apparently thinking that it is only fair when everyone is poor. Many in the US government and many others have been either complacent or duped by this. Your report documents this but it also indicates that it has been noticed. Score a point for the skeptics. Thanks.

GO, WILLIS! I pray all the time that the general public finally understands that they have been completely SCREWED by a MINORITY of idiot progressives, whose whole philosophy has now been shown to be junk. If you look at the history books, especially re: Germany, you could get very sick to your stomach…

Could someone explain how the IPCC fits within the the mission of the US State Department? Is it the “Intergovernmental” part of IPCC?

Here is the State Department’s Mission Statement:

“Shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere.”http://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/index.htm#mission

Addressing the consequences of a problem that the vast majority of the world’s scientists and scientific bodies agree is happening, and will get worse, clearly falls under this purview. Frankly, it would be irresponsible if the State Department *weren’t* studying the issue.

I wouldn’t mind the State Department studying the issue. Actually I would, but that would be tolerable.
Unfortunately, giving money to a bunch of pseudo-scientists and parasites like the IPCC is not “studying” anything.
If it’s so noble, why are they funding them so secretly?
w.

Add my vote in to defund & delete the IPCC and the UN!
GAO has a valid point. The taxpaying public is unaware of the myriad ways that monies are being siphoned off into this sham. Every agency has some sort of climate change initiative. Some of them are so preposterous it would be funny if not true (and costly). Add all of them together and how many trillions have we wasted?
And how did we ever end up in a situation where the science was suddenly settled, the remedy prescribed and then forced onto all nations? When did I have my opportunity as a citizen of a democratic nation to vote on all of this? It was all forced onto us.
End the IPCC, UN, Ethanol subsidies, solar & windmill subsidies etc etc etc….

The reports says the government OVER stated how much was spent on the IPCC!

“Regarding State [Dept.] funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.”

Nope. The report says that in what looks like a typical UN scam, money listed for one organization is “passed through” to another organization to avoid oversight. That doesn’t make it better, that makes it worse.
w.

Phil M. says:
January 5, 2012 at 6:45 pm
“To be sure, $3.1 million a year (since FY2001) is nothing to sneeze at. That’s the number the GAO gave in the link you provided, by the way.”
You ignore the far greater economic impacts that result from enacting IPCC-inspired policies. In your book, those are probably beneficial (like giving 500mio to Solyndra and have them evaporated); but for sane people, this counts as damages.

Great post as always Willis!
Up here in BC, I’m thankful the Canadian government has pulled out of the ridiculous Kyoto scheme. After reading your post, I wondered how much our government gave to the IPCC, UNFCCC,
Sadly, I got an answer all too easily.http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=5F50D3E9-1#UNFCCC
Aside from claiming that ” Canada is contributing $1.2 billion in new and additional climate change financing for the fiscal years 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2012/2013″, making me retch, I scrolled down to shamefully see that
“Canada’s Contribution to the UNFCCC: $763,000 in fast-start financing, combined with other international assistance for a total $1 million” a year.
Ugh. Never wrote a letter to a politician before, but I’m temped to write one to our Environment Minister Peter Kent, who was the voice of reason in pulling out of Kyoto. Now if we can stop funding all these other obvious schemes.

Willis-
My apologies for not commenting sooner. I ready your post, and had to be immediately transported to the emergency room for a “laughectomy”.
(You see, I found your anti-government rant to be so hilarious I laughed until I hurt myself.)
To be sure, $3.1 million a year (since FY2001) is nothing to sneeze at. That’s the number the GAO gave in the link you provided, by the way.
The GAO number I find more interesting is the amount we’ve spent in/on Afghanistan, Iraq and the ‘Global War on Terror’ since 9/11/01. What does $6.7 billion a month do to your blood? Does it ‘angrify’ it as well?
You see, it has always appeared to me that your vendetta against the government and environmental science has been personal. Have I been mistaken this entire time? Is it really about the money?
Just curious.

Not sure what your point is, Phil. Are you telling me I should be outraged at the cost of the wars? I am. So? What on earth does that have to do with the IPCC?
In addition, defunding the IPCC would save much more than the $30 million bucks. The IPCC is one of the centers of disinformation masquerading as climate science. It is a main excuse for the ongoing wasting billions and billions of dollars.
More to the point, it is the focus of efforts to make energy more expensive, and that kills children. I lived a good part of my life in the developing world, including in LDCs. I’ve seen what high energy costs do to the poor.
Now, you may not care about that, and that’s not a problem. Every man has to decide where to put his efforts, and your decision is clearly on protesting war rather than on saving the poor from the ugly and sometimes fatal consequences of expensive energy.
Be clear that I am not saying your focus on the war is bad, or that my focus on energy costs and children’s lives and the poor is “better” somehow. Neither one is true.
Which is why it is entirely improper of you to try to decide what I should focus on. You focus on what you want … I will focus on what I want. Your suggestion that I am morally wrong in my choice of where to focus my efforts is both impertinent and unpleasant, as is your speculation that it is “really about the money”.
So if you want to talk about the war, fine. This is not the place for that, so I welcome you to discuss it elsewhere. What you have done is the equivalent of entering a group discussing the intricacies of cross-stitching samplers, and abusing them because they’re not protesting injustice in the US court system. Doesn’t work that way.
You get to be upset about whatever upsets you. But you don’t get to come in to my thread and accuse me of not being upset enough about your pet peeve. Go write your own thread about that.
Regards,
w.

Great post as always Willis!
Up here in BC, I’m thankful the Canadian government has pulled out of the ridiculous Kyoto scheme. After reading your post, I wondered how much our government gave to the IPCC, UNFCCC,
Sadly, I got an answer all too easily.http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=5F50D3E9-1#UNFCCC
Aside from claiming that ” Canada is contributing $1.2 billion in new and additional climate change financing for the fiscal years 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2012/2013″, making me retch, I scrolled down to shamefully see that
“Canada’s Contribution to the UNFCCC: $763,000 in fast-start financing, combined with other international assistance for a total $1 million” a year.

Indeed. First get out of Kyoto, then out of the UNFCCC. You’re on the right path.
w.

Mike says:
January 5, 2012 at 4:01 pm
“The reports says the government OVER stated how much was spent on the IPCC!”
Good! Well, since it is so “little” money let’s just defund the entire corrupt enterprise and no one will know!

Eschenbach’s hawk soars yet again, Much as I love hawks I hope it never soars over my backyard, The birds on my feeder will disappear for weeks in terror. Too bad the hogs at the government trough aren’t so sensitive.

PhilJourdan says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:16 am
“defund the whole UN!”
Absolutely Phil and if the U.S. had any sense they would throw them out of the buildings they use in the U.S. I have watched the U.N. around the world and they serve no purpose at all! Well over 40 years in Cyprus and a U.N. declared illegal invasion by Turkey still carries on.

Having enjoyed all the flap here, it still boils down to who we elect. Accountability is zippo. We are victims of “How to catch a pig.” Some of you will have to go look it up. Willis is spot on with what the vast clear minded folks are thinking. Time to start doing, or is that undoing?

The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC. Thanks, guys. Foolish me, I hadn’t realized that paying for bureaucrats to go party in Cancun and Durban was part of the function of the United States Department of State.
————-
Willis, Do you know for sure that the IPCC funded the Cancun or Durban conferences or is this just assumed.

Willis great post as usual, the IPCC is a waste of time and money.Politicians always protect the status quo that gives them continuity of porking (I can make up verbs). My own personal way forward is to try and get the MSM thinking better, don’t buy anything they produce, defund the MSM and they will start to liven up. Tell them what you think about the IPCC on line. Ask them to do editorials on the hypocrisy of the IPCC. Nothing happens, approach their advertisers.
You are a very eloquent writer, maybe start a campaign?

The aforesaid railroad engineer is listed on the Internet as consulting to Deutsch Bank in 2008. Have a look at some of the other names in the Annual Report and use your imagination. Maybe the GAO can get an idea from linkages such as this –
Climate Change Advisory Board
Lord Browne
Managing Director and
Managing Partner (Europe) of
Riverstone Holdings LLC
John Coomber
Member of the Board of Directors
Swiss Re
Fabio Feldmann
CEO, Fabio Feldmann Consultores
Zhang Hongren
Former President International
Union of Geological Science
Amory B. Lovins
Chairman & CEO,
Rocky Mountain Institute
Lord Oxburgh
Dr. R K Pachauri
Chairman, IPCC
Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
Director, Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Robert Socolow
Co-Director,
Carbon Mitigation Initiative
Klaus Töpfer
Former German Minister for Environment

Can we play the what’s IPCC stand for game as it’s the weekend.
I’ll start.
Incompetent Pile of Consensus Cronies.
(I would of called them clowns but that’s throwing custard in the face of an honourable profession).

E.M.Smith says: January 5, 2012 at 1:58 pm
‘So yes, de-fund the IPCC, but don’t forget the OTHER thousands of suckers in the flesh of government funding for all the other parts of the “Agenda”…’
FYIhttp://www.iclei.org/

Mike says:
January 5, 2012 at 3:56 pmGood old George Bush.
Right, he couldn’t stop Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae from creating a gigantic market for “bad paper”, he couldn’t get Gov’t funded scientists to do real science, he couldn’t simply defund the U.N….All in all, he just didn’t have either the will or the mechanisms in place in America to be a Great Dictator! But at least the IPCC and Barack Obama, enc., are trying!

Alan Watt says:
January 5, 2012 at 5:55 pm
all his good intentions will take a back seat to his desire to be re-elected.
————-
We select juries at random to make life and death decisions. Why not do the same with the political process? I would immediately be suspicious of anyone that spend 100 million to become a jurist with a salary of 100 thousand. Yet that is exactly what happens at election time.
Unfortunately, the ballot box does not have the choice “none of the above”.

highflight56433 says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:32 pm
We are victims of “How to catch a pig.”
He asked, “Do you know how to catch wild pigs?” The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.
The young man said this was no joke. “You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a Fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.
Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, Obaba Care, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms-just A little at a time.

Willis claimed: “US General Accounting Office, says US has been secretly hiding their funding of the IPCC for the last decade.”
The GAO found: “Regarding State [Dept.] funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.”
Willis replied: “Nope. The report says that in what looks like a typical UN scam, money listed for one organization is “passed through” to another organization to avoid oversight. That doesn’t make it better, that makes it worse.”
Worse than what? Worse than what you claimed? It would indeed be interesting to learn where the “passed through” money went. If it was diverted for weapons to the Contras, that would be worse. If it was accidentally given to UNICEF, that would not be worse. Maybe it went to Solyndra! OMG! But it seems clear that your claim is false.

with all that is coming out about the govt, why are they still in power? i wish the people would grow some balls already, a handful in OWS doesnt cut it. there has to be more than just a few thousand who are willing to fight, its a country of 300 million people. this country is doomed not because people are just waking up but because they will not go out and force the change. hell the arab nations are willing to put their lives on the line to remove their govts, they have balls, we are just a bunch of cowards we need to change our anthem to home of the cowards.

Russ Steele says: January 5, 2012 at 12:46 pm
“I did not it send to my CA Senators, as both are rabid warmers. You cannot imagine the junk responses I get back from Sen. Boxer when I send her some climate change facts. Well, maybe you could as a WUWT reader.”YES I CAN! Senator (Box-of-Rocks) Boxer is my Senator, too. When they shake the stupid tree, most of the fruit will hit the ground after a few seconds. Box-of-Rocks is so far up the tree, she won’t hit the ground for a week.

maybe we can get the arab nations to arm a bunch of rebels here to help take out the real criminals. after all, we did it for the rebels in libya and syria. mind ya the libyans were not bad off people. they did not have taxes, they had interest free loans from the state controlled banks, they got free healthcare and schooling. and if they needed to go outside their countries for school or medical care the state paid for it. seems to me all that we get is war and less freedoms and more dbt. and so many people here think the arab world is real bad. they need to step back and realize that everythign the govt claims about those nations is false, we are the oppressed people.

The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC. Thanks, guys. Foolish me, I hadn’t realized that paying for bureaucrats to go party in Cancun and Durban was part of the function of the United States Department of State.
————-

Willis, Do you know for sure that the IPCC funded the Cancun or Durban conferences or is this just assumed.

You’re right, Lazy, the conferences are funded by the parent body, the UNFCCC. However, no one has ever heard of them, so I kinda elided over their name to avoid confusing folks.
w.

“US General Accounting Office, says US has been secretly hiding their funding of the IPCC for the last decade.”

The GAO found:

“Regarding State [Dept.] funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.”

Willis replied:

“Nope. The report says that in what looks like a typical UN scam, money listed for one organization is “passed through” to another organization to avoid oversight. That doesn’t make it better, that makes it worse.”

Worse than what? Worse than what you claimed? It would indeed be interesting to learn where the “passed through” money went. If it was diverted for weapons to the Contras, that would be worse. If it was accidentally given to UNICEF, that would not be worse. Maybe it went to Solyndra! OMG! But it seems clear that your claim is false.

It is worse because instead of telling the truth about where the money was going, they lied about where it was going and spent it on something else. Nor does what it was spent on change things.
It’s as if when you were a kid you asked your mom for ten bucks to buy school supplies. But say you didn’t buy the school supplies, you spent the money on something else.
Will your mom think that the important issue is what you spent the money on … or will she see the important issue as being the fact that you lied to her?
So yes, Mike, it is worse, no matter what it was spent on.
w.
PS—Curiously, you point out an issue. You say it would be fine if the funds went to UNICEF. But the US is legally barred from giving funds to UNICEF, so that would be much worse … and that’s the problem with lying about where it’s going. It can end up anywhere, including places where it’s illegal for the money to go.

jae says:
January 5, 2012 at 7:03 pm
GO, WILLIS! I pray all the time that the general public finally understands that they have been completely SCREWED by a MINORITY of idiot progressives…
___
The implication of course is that “your” candidates are beyond big money politics and are truly serving only for the public good. In case you haven’t noticed, the IPCC has been funded across multiple administrations, and it takes a boat load of money for anyone to make it to Washington, and that money always has nice little strings attached. It is only a difference of who pays whom when a new member joins the ranks, and so in the current state of American politics, party matters not as they all march under the banner of big money, and most of all, it sure is convenient to keep the progressives and conservatives battling over meaningless issues, so long as the gravy-train keeps flowing to one and all in Washington.

Willis in his recent post (Jan 6 at 10:08) said the US is legally barred from giving funds to UNICEF.
The US UNICEF site is thanking Congress for giving them funds:

The U.S. Congress finally agreed on a bill to fund the Federal Government for the rest of Fiscal Year 2012, which began on October 1. Included in this package are the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations, which includes the U.S. Government’s annual voluntary contribution to UNICEF’s regular resources.
We are pleased to share with you that the Congress provided nearly $132 million for UNICEF, about the same funding as last fiscal year. This is a huge victory, because Congress cut core foreign operations spending by about $6 billion from FY 2011 levels. In effect, Congress preserved UNICEF funding in the midst of tough budget cuts.

http://volunteers.unicefusa.org/activities/advocate/unicef-funding.html
That’s about forty times more in one year than the annual US funding for the IPCC, according to the GAO report.
Is he now going to complain about the US government helping the children of the world?
The main article does seem riddled with silliness and wrong statements. (Just one example – Durban and Cancun are not IPCC meetings.)

Pointman says:
January 6, 2012 at 9:54 am
The IPCC enjoys my complete support, as does the railway engineer. It, like him, is a wonderful albatross hung around the neck of the global warming cult. Long may they both fester.
Pointman

The fear is, that they’re red herrings, not albatrosses. The Big Money continues to flow, elsewhere.

I want to comment in responce to the rather cynical statement above referring to Ron Paul. To his credit he says he knows nothing about Ron Paul, and assumes that all politicians are devoid of character. He also calls it the folly of youth to believe otherwise. I am 65 years old and I have looked at Ron Paul and I support him without reservation. I think the above comment is understandable when applied to politicians. But Ron Paul is a statesman, one of the few remaining in government. In thirty years he has never taken a government junket, or voted for a salary increase for government. Ron Paul is incorruptabe which is why he is opposed by all politicians.
He does not seek power which is at the root of corruption. He seeks to return our country to the rule of law. So let go of your cynicism long enought to really investigate the only man of character in this election. Perhaps you can actually learn something of value.REPLY: That’s enough about Ron Paul – this article isn’t about him – all further off-topic discussions will be snipped – Anthony

this is what obama and the democrats are trying to do – set up these bureaucracies with their own funding streams independent from Congressional oversight (and free from taxpayer retribution). These latest crooks he appointed in the last few days, at least one of them is supposed to head up some “consumer ‘PROTECTION’ Bureau”, lol and HE ALONE will decide how much taxpayer money his bureau is entitled to. They really think they are kings and aren’t at all concerned about you little people.

Well Joe, you are absolutely correct. What often puzzles me is that these things come as a BIG surprise to anyone. Considering all that is already exposed and knowing the it is only the tip of the iceberg, people still have not awakened to the truth.
A complete systematic replacement is what is needed. And this will not come from TPTB. Only when the people wake up and demand that this nonsense is stopped, will the desire to get on track will be fulfilled.
It will not happen any other way.

I think the Americans have done enough to help people out, particularly in their own time of need financially. I wish alarmists wouldn’t condemn them so quickly, they are smart people, a lot smarter than they are given credit for. It’s Europe that are the problem, and I include Great Britain. This air tax is ridiculous, now China is saying it will introduce carbon tax in 2015. The Australian government is saying now they were right to bring in the carbon tax. Would this be that China is now the chief manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels etc? But the UNIPCC and the UNCCF is a con, and a step to prove a one world government will work. LIke hell it will.

@Willis
UNFCCC is not the parent body of the IPCC (UNEP and WMO are), so the only person confused here is you. The COP meetings have nothing to do with the IPCC, nor it’s funding.
Why insist on things that are obviously, checkably, wrong? It just undermines your credibility.

The IPCC is funded by regular contributions from its parents’ organizations WMO and UNEP, the UNFCCC and voluntary contributions by its member countries.

So contrary to your claim, the UNFCCC is indeed one of the funders of the IPCC. It also (as you note) funds the annual Conference of the Partygoers.

Why insist on things that are obviously, checkably, wrong? It just undermines your credibility.

Why insist on being a jerk, JPY? Even if you were right, why the snark and nastiness? I thought the IPCC was funded by the UNFCCC. Turns out it is funded by the UNFCCC. Who knew? Not you, obviously.
Next time, I’d advise you do your homework first before trying to bust me, particularly on such an inconsequential point. I say defund the IPCC no matter who is funding it.
Happy now?
w.

“This”, the IPCC, has been a leading player in convincing the world to spend billions, not millions as with Solyndra but billions, on policies which have done absolutely nothing for the planet. Zero. Zip.
If you think that countries following the Pied Piper of the IPCC and pouring billions and billions of dollars down a climate rathole is “a bargain compared to Solyndra”, you’re not following the story.
w.

Willis in his recent post (Jan 6 at 10:08) said the US is legally barred from giving funds to UNICEF.

My bad, Sou, it was UNESCO we’re barred from funding. I find it hard to hack my way through the bafflegab and keep the acronyms strainght. So sue me.
I notice you said nothing about the actual main issues in my posting, perhaps wisely so. However, are there any other trivial points you’d like to harp on? Now’s the time.
w.

Hi Willis, Thanks for inviting me to respond. I tried to do so several hours ago and was more polite than you, but it looks as if WUWT doesn’t accept my comments any more. From reading of other posters this has happened to, I’d say that this website limits and/or prevents comments from people who accept mainstream climate science and understand what forces are driving the climate these days. (Anthony made veiled threats to me in the past because I accept the science, and put me on some sort of mod list months ago.)
Maybe one of the mods will pass my previous unpublished comment on to you privately.

@Willis
You might want to work on the reading comprehension a little.
1) UNEP and WMO are the parent bodies of IPCC – no one else:http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization_structure.shtml
2) The line you quote states that the UNFCCC provides some funding to IPCC. Fair enough.
3) But your argument is now completely backwards. In the top post you state

The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC. Thanks, guys. Foolish me, I hadn’t realized that paying for bureaucrats to go party in Cancun and Durban was part of the function of the United States Department of State.

implying that this State Dept. money went to funding the COP meetings of the UNFCCC. This is just wrong because the $1.9 million per year (some extra context there) from State goes to the IPCC Trust Fund – not UNFCCC. (By the way, I think you’ll find that it is precisely the job of State to pay for bureaucrats to go meetings and talk to other bureaucrats).
Your revised argument above is that the IPCC should be defunded because it also gets some money from UNFCCC, but how that is related to the US funding of IPCC directly is a complete mystery.
All we are able to conclude is that you want the IPCC to be defunded (for whatever reason) regardless of where it’s money comes from, in which case, what was the point of this post other than to confuse and mislead?

Hi Willis, Thanks for inviting me to respond. I tried to do so several hours ago and was more polite than you, but it looks as if WUWT doesn’t accept my comments any more. From reading of other posters this has happened to, I’d say that this website limits and/or prevents comments from people who accept mainstream climate science and understand what forces are driving the climate these days. (Anthony made veiled threats to me in the past because I accept the science, and put me on some sort of mod list months ago.)
Maybe one of the mods will pass my previous unpublished comment on to you privately.

Nonsense. People do get snipped here, but AFAIK never for scientific reasons, only because they are being jerks. If you weren’t being a jerk, then your post might have gotten caught in the spam filter. Or perhaps it never got posted due to some internet glitch, how do I know?
But your paranoia doesn’t move things forwards. I lose posts on blogs once in a while, which is why I copy them before I post them. Then if they go missing, I repost them. I suggest you might do the same.
w.
PS—If I’m going to be impolite to you, you will know it. My previous post was me being more polite than you deserved, given the tone of your comment. Hey, I made a mistake, I mistook UNICEF for UNESCO … but from your reporting, you’d have thought I robbed a bank or had been charged with moral turpentine or mopery on the skyways or something.

… All we are able to conclude is that you want the IPCC to be defunded (for whatever reason) regardless of where it’s money comes from, in which case, what was the point of this post other than to confuse and mislead?

I would like the IPCC defunded. And you are right, I want it defunded no matter where the money comes from.
I have made my reasons for wanting it defunded abundantly clear. And since you asked, the point of the post is that the US has been secretly funding the IPCC, which should be stopped.
If you are confused, I fear you’ll find the reason in a mirror, and not here in this thread. Everyone else seemed to be able to discern the point of the post, so get with the program or you’ll be left behind.
w.

The latest 2011 GAO Report says the US government has not changed their ways. They have been clandestinely providing about half the operating funds for the IPCC for the last decade. In other words, the IPCC funding arrangements are of a piece with their “scientific” claims and their other actions—secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.

Oh, what a pile of hogwash. The previous administration (George Bush Jr) doubted the cause of global warming as anthropogenic, described the EPA findings that humanity caused most of recent the warming as ‘bureaucracy’, was criticised by climate scientists (and other scientists) for ‘hiding the truth’ and muzzling scientists, and withdrew US support from the Kyoto protocol as one of its early acts of governance. Their funding of the IPCC was totally at odds with their “scientific claims.”
The Bush admin was heavily plugged in to big oil (didn’t Condaleeza Rice have an oil tanker named after her?). You could spin a yarn about them conspiring against the IPCC/Kyoto, but conspiring with? Puhleeeeease.
Anyone who purports government green conspiracy in the US or Australia does this amazing mental trick where they delete the decade of the previous government from the record. For it’s sheer size, an amusing oversight.

The latest 2011 GAO Report says the US government has not changed their ways. They have been clandestinely providing about half the operating funds for the IPCC for the last decade. In other words, the IPCC funding arrangements are of a piece with their “scientific” claims and their other actions—secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.

Oh, what a pile of hogwash. The previous administration (George Bush Jr) doubted the cause of global warming as anthropogenic, described the EPA findings that humanity caused most of recent the warming as ‘bureaucracy’, was criticised by climate scientists (and other scientists) for ‘hiding the truth’ and muzzling scientists, and withdrew US support from the Kyoto protocol as one of its early acts of governance. Their funding of the IPCC was totally at odds with their “scientific claims.”
The Bush admin was heavily plugged in to big oil (didn’t Condaleeza Rice have an oil tanker named after her?). You could spin a yarn about them conspiring against the IPCC/Kyoto, but conspiring with? Puhleeeeease.

First, barry, perhaps you are not from the US, but different parts of the US do different things. Sometimes they do them without the approval of the powers that be.
Second, the State Department is comprised of career bureaucrats, and has a reputation for being one of the more liberal branches of the government.
This often leads to the right hand either not knowing or not able to do anything about what the left hand does. For example, according to the US General Accounting Office (GAO), the secret funding of the IPCC has been going on for a decade. Did Bush know about that? I haven’t a clue. You are right about Bush’s ways … but what does that have to do with evidence, not a guess but evidence, of clandestine funding going back a decade, through more than half the Bush presidency?
Here’s the deal, barry. if you want to claim that the GAO is lying or mistaken about the IPCC funding, you’ll need to bring more than your good looks and your electronic pen to the discussion. You have to bring some evidence that the GAO is wrong about the funding going on under Bush. You know evidence, right? They also call it “facts”, “data”, “reports”, things like that.
Because so far, my friend, what we have is a well researched, cited, detailed GAO document on one side that says the clandestine funding went on under both Obama and Bush, and on the other side … well, what we have is you. And your mouth.
Your move …
w.

Gosh, my bad. Because the UNFCCC funds IPCC I assumed it was one of the “parent bodies”, but it isn’t. So sue me.

3) But your argument is now completely backwards. In the top post you state

The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC. Thanks, guys. Foolish me, I hadn’t realized that paying for bureaucrats to go party in Cancun and Durban was part of the function of the United States Department of State.

implying that this State Dept. money went to funding the COP meetings of the UNFCCC. This is just wrong because the $1.9 million per year (some extra context there) from State goes to the IPCC Trust Fund – not UNFCCC. (By the way, I think you’ll find that it is precisely the job of State to pay for bureaucrats to go meetings and talk to other bureaucrats).

You’re right, the US money went to parasites in Geneva rather than to parasites in Durban. I feel much better now …
But “$1.9 million” as you claim? As a friend of mine remarked, you “might want to work on the reading comprehension a little”, because the report says:

State provided $19 million for administrative and other expenses.

Get with the picture here, JPY. The GAO report doesn’t even contain the number “1.9”, that’s your poor reading comprehensions.

Your revised argument above is that the IPCC should be defunded because it also gets some money from UNFCCC, but how that is related to the US funding of IPCC directly is a complete mystery.

I want the UN IPCC defunded, but not “because it also gets some money from UNFCCC”, that’s your fantasy based on … well, I haven’t a clue what you base your fantasies on. I was quite clear why I wanted it defunded. I said:

Can anyone name for me one valuable thing that the IPCC has done? Can anyone point to an accomplishment by the IPCC that justifies their existence? Because I can’t. They throw a good party, to be sure, their last global extravaganza had 10,000 guests … but as for advancing the climate discussion, they have done nothing but push it backwards.
And the next Assessment Report, AR5, will be even more meaningless than the last. This time, people are watching them refuse to require conflict-of-interest statements from the authors. This time, people are watching them appoint known serial scientific malfeasants to positions of power in the writing of the report. This time, people are keeping track of the petty machinations of the railroad engineer that’s running the show despite calls from his own supporters to step down.
As a result, the AR5 report from the IPCC has been pre-debunked. It will be published to no doubt great fanfare and sink like a stone, dragged down by the politicized, poorly summarized bad science and rewarmed NGO puff pieces that the IPCC is promoting as though they were real science.

That’s why I want it defunded, not because it get money from the UNFCCC. You really, really should work on your reading comprehension, because that part was quite clear.

All we are able to conclude is that you want the IPCC to be defunded (for whatever reason) regardless of where it’s money comes from, in which case, what was the point of this post other than to confuse and mislead?

Nope. That may be all you are able to conclude, but if so, you must have failed reading class. We are able to conclude that I want the IPCC defunded for the reasons I clearly stated, mainly that it has not done anything of value for as long as it has existed and is thus nothing more than a useless pile of parasites.
w.

HI Willis,
I like this piece (no comment on the Moon one :)). It makes my blood boil, but the amounts are not significant. I went to the GAO website. It’s not very clean for finding stuff online. From there I got directed to the Recovery Act of 2011, and from there to the 2012 Budget, published by the U.S Government Printing Office:http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=BUDGET&browsePath=Fiscal+Year+2012&isCollapsed=false&leafLevelBrowse=false&isDocumentResults=true&ycord=0
It’s online as a PDF and you can do some searches on words like “Climate” and “Global Warming”. On the Global Warming search I found this “gem”:
“That is why the Budget makes a significant
investment in clean energy technology. Whoever
leads in the global, clean energy economy will
also take the lead in creating high-paying, highly skilled
jobs for its people. More than that, moving
toward a clean energy economy will reduce
our reliance on foreign oil and on other energy
sources that contribute to global warming. We
are at the cusp of a future in which hundreds of
thousands of cars and trucks that do not rely on
a gasoline-powered engine will be on our roads,
and where millions of homes will be powered by
electricity from clean sources. To bring about this
future and to nurture the incalculable number of
good ideas that one day will be ready to go from
lab to market, we need to make the United States
the world leader in innovation. The Budget
proposes to:
Increase Investment in Research and
Development (R&D) and the Creation of
Transformational Technologies. For many
years, the United States has been a world leader
in R&D spending, as well as in the quality and
impact of that spending. The challenge is for the
United States to make private and public investments
in science, research and development that
will keep the United States as the world’s leader
in innovation for decades to come. The 2012 Budget
does that by providing $148 billion for R&D
overall, while targeting resources to those areas
most likely to directly contribute to the creation
of transformational technologies that can create
the businesses and jobs of the future. Among the
steps taken are:…..”
Yep, you read that right, AN INCREASE TO $148 BILLION for research of new technologies to compete in the global economy fighting the effects of Global Warming.
And that is just one instance…..
Best,
J.

Willis,
Oh, so now it’s not the ‘US Government’, but ‘career bureaucrats in the US State Department’. Thanks for the clarification. So, do these people operate in isolation from the Secretary of State?

but what does that have to do with evidence, not a guess but evidence, of clandestine funding going back a decade, through more than half the Bush presidency?

Calling it ‘clandestine’ is your spin. The GAO reports inadequate, not mendacious accounting practises.
The report refers to poorly documented funding going back to 2001 – that’s the entire Bush administration and the State Department under Powell and then Rice, and that’s ten years of sneaky bureaucrats passing money under their noses against the government’s “scientific claims”. I can hardly wait for the full exposay.
And what is the bill for State Department funding? $1.9 million a year. Staggering.
And how much were they trying to hide? I quote from the first paragraph on your link.

Second, the funding data that GAO obtained from State and NSF were inconsistent with data that State had previously reported to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in June 2010. Regarding State funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.

So the State Department overstated the funding to the IPCC.
The GAO report is a sober assessment of two clerical errors, one which runs counter to your argument, and the other is a mislabelling the year of a funding packet (this criticism is disputed by the NSF). The GAO report calls for a change of protocol and consolidation of funding reporting for the IPCC, because the State and NSF are generally not required to report this information to Congress (first paragraph, your link). The agencies have not been involved in something “secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.” You article is a political spin cycle, and would be a good fit in National Enquirer, or similar lurid tabloid.

Willis,
Oh, so now it’s not the ‘US Government’, but ‘career bureaucrats in the US State Department’. Thanks for the clarification. So, do these people operate in isolation from the Secretary of State?

If your first beef is that I referred to the actions of a part of the US Government as actions of “the US Government”, you’ve lost the argument and are picking nits. That is unbelievably trivial.

but what does that have to do with evidence, not a guess but evidence, of clandestine funding going back a decade, through more than half the Bush presidency?

Calling it ‘clandestine’ is your spin. The GAO reports inadequate, not mendacious accounting practises.
The report refers to poorly documented funding going back to 2001 – that’s the entire Bush administration and the State Department under Powell and then Rice, and that’s ten years of sneaky bureaucrats passing money under their noses against the government’s “scientific claims”. I can hardly wait for the full exposay.

barry, the GAO pointed out in their report that they told the State Department about what you call an “inadequate accounting practice” back in 2005. At that point in 2005 it could possibly have been a mistake.
But when they didn’t fix it, and they kept up the practice of not reporting the expenditure? Sorry, at that point anyone who thinks it is still an “inadequate accounting practice” is either not following the story, or doesn’t understand the US Government. Your choice

And what is the bill for State Department funding? $1.9 million a year. Staggering.

So would you be willing to pay the trivial bill out of your own pocket? Nineteen million dollars is real money, barry, no matter how much you may sneer and look down your nose at it. And from my perspective, even a penny is far too much to spend on those charming folks.

And how much were they trying to hide? I quote from the first paragraph on your link.

Second, the funding data that GAO obtained from State and NSF were inconsistent with data that State had previously reported to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce in June 2010. Regarding State funding, GAO determined that the information it provided to the committee incorrectly included about $3.5 million (in constant 2010 dollars) that was passed through the IPCC account but was not used for IPCC activities.

So the State Department overstated the funding to the IPCC.

You really do have reading difficulties, don’t you? I thought I was kidding before when I said that.
The State Department didn’t “overstate” a dang thing. They reported exactly how much money they gave to the IPCC. The fact that the IPCC didn’t spend it all on IPCC business, but spent it on some other project, makes things worse, not better … but it was still funding that the US gave to the IPCC no matter what they did with it from there.

The GAO report is a sober assessment of two clerical errors, one which runs counter to your argument, and the other is a mislabelling the year of a funding packet (this criticism is disputed by the NSF). The GAO report calls for a change of protocol and consolidation of funding reporting for the IPCC, because the State and NSF are generally not required to report this information to Congress (first paragraph, your link). The agencies have not been involved in something “secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.” You article is a political spin cycle, and would be a good fit in National Enquirer, or similar lurid tabloid.

Right, it’s gone on for ten years (despite being pointed out six years ago) and it has poured $19 million dollars down a rathole because of “mislabelling” and “clerical errors” … you are welcome to believe that, barry.
I’m sure, however, you’ll forgive those of us who actually spend time in the real world if we don’t sign on to your fantasies about noble bureaucrats making simple reporting errors … save that story to tell your kids.
w.
PS-It might help your understanding to recall that in 2005, when GAO blew the whistle the first time, there was a Republican in power … so disguising/concealing/hiding (you pick the word of choice) the funding of the IPCC would have been greatly in the interest of those who arranged that the US taxpayer would float $19 million dollars of the IPCC’s expanses …

barry, your claim that 19 million dollars is too trivial to be concerned about reminded me of Everett Dirksen’s quote. Dirksen was a long-time opponent of government spending. He famously said:

A million here, a million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.

The domestic equivalent is “Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.
And yet you advise we ignore both the pennies and the millions as being below your concern line.
I hold with Dirksen in this question. Especially in our current parlous economic condition (broke and owing lots of money), waste in any form and of any amount needs to be watched carefully, even if it is “only” nineteen million dollars.
w.

Willis,
it is no secret that the US, along with other governments, helps fund the IPCC process. And it’s well-known that the US foots the lion’s share of the bill, a few million a year. The way you tell it, this is some great revelation. It isn’t.
There is nothing wrong with you demanding your Congress-critter make sure funding details are clearer. Changing the rules is a Congressional responsibility and that is precisely where you should direct your bile. But you direct it at the wrong people.
Having read further, the 2005 report did not examine State Department financial reporting practises at all, so your suggestion that S/D bureaucrats ignored advice in 2005 is at odds with the facts. Is the State Department supposed to take accounting advice directed specifically at the OMB? The implication is not only that the right hand should know what the left foot is doing, but should be doing the same thing. And the advice to the then CCSP was different to what the NSF got in the latest report. Furthermore, the GAO makes no mention of the 2005 report in its latest report.
I suppose you could argue you didn’t specifically tie the State Department into the allegation that bureaucrats ignored the 2005 report. But that is the implication, and that’s what rhetoric is supposed to do – stir the emotions, not nourish the mind. And it’s not very convincing to smear government officials as “secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation,” when your own article is quite misleading about who did what.
So, the two reports are about different departments and different issues with funding reporting, but you’ve conflated them in order to spin a false narrative about continued bad behaviour. Here in Australia, we’re just as cynical about self-serving bureaucracy and pork-barrelling pollies, but when the discussion moves from idle gossip to printed media, there’s usually at least a modicum of effort put into substantiating claims and delineating the players in the story.
If you have problem with the US spending a single cent on the IPCC, then that’s fine. Just make your case with more attention to the facts. I note that you’ve already responded positively to corrections upthread on the money trail.
For the US bean-counters, the average contribution to the IPCC from each US tax payer is 1 – 2 cents a year. Maybe it’s not worth your cholesterol uptake.

I also found out that the IPCC got $12.1 million dollars from the US Global Change Research Program. That one really angrifies my blood. The IPCC flat out states that they do not do a single scrap of scientific research … so why is the US Global Change Research Program giving them a dime, much less twelve million, that was supposed to go for research? I could use that for my research, for example …
I would not give either you or the IPCC a single dime or penny for any of your work, except that someone is holding a loaded gun to my child’s father’s head.
I have to credit you for at least not hiding your agenda on that matter.

Willis,
it is no secret that the US, along with other governments, helps fund the IPCC process. And it’s well-known that the US foots the lion’s share of the bill, a few million a year. The way you tell it, this is some great revelation. It isn’t.

barry, I can tell that reading must be hard for you. That’s why I noted in big old quotes above the following. The GAO said that the information on the secretive IPCC funding:

“… was not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”

See the part about where they say the information was “not available”, barry?
Let’s review the bidding here. The GAO, the US Government agency charged with making sure such financial data is available and correct, and with hundreds of bureaucrats to track it down, says that the data was “not available”. It provides a stack of information and documents to back up their claim.
Lower-case barry, on the other hand, a random angry anonymous poster on the internet, says the data was “widely known”. To back up his claim, he provides … well … he provides nothing but a condescending attitude and an artful sneer.
I’m sure you see the problem, barry …
w.

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